Along with Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King, which was released back in May, Chapters of the Chosen is a straight up port made to bring in a new group of players to the series. With little changed or added, and no hidden fees, the game will also likely appeal to older players who may have toyed around with the original game on the Super Nintendo (SNES) years ago.

Many reviewers might mention the game’s odd vertical on-screen orientation, but that was an innovation actually introduced in the game’s 2008 Nintendo DS port that featured updated graphics and 3D environments.

So that’s about it. Review over. Go home. What you see is what you get. Or is it?

Although the iOS port of the game is for all intents and purposes the exact same as the DS game, there are a few things the developers could have done, or could have left alone, to give users a better experience.

Browsing through an EB Games back in the roaring 90’s, I spied Dragon Warrior III on the Game Boy Colour shelf.

I remember thinking how similar the characters looked to Dragon Ball and with a little parental prodding, I left the store with the game. It came with everything from a map featuring the characters and a nice manual that spoke of the game’s lore.

Meant to help accommodate both the Nintendo DS and the portrait-style screens of mobile devices, the orientation might be a little off putting for old fans picking this new version up. Handout

When you enter into the world of Dragon Quest, especially the older versions, those initial views of the characters are extremely important with how we imprint personalities onto them.

A great part of the 2008 DS port was the inclusion of updated portraits of the characters. The characters’ faces appeared everywhere from the ‘attribute screen’ to the health and mana stats above each battle.

As the game is divided up into chapters, characters have to develop within the short amount of time we have with them until they all meet up. Those few hours we have playing with Ragnar, Alena, Maya, Meena, and Torneko are all we get.

With a portrait, Alena is no longer just a series of pixels and Ragnar’s mustache can be seen in all its glory, but in the iPad version they’re made so small you can barely see them. It’s not a deal breaking change, but the DS version of the game has a much better UI while exploring and during battle.

Characters are an integral part of all role-playing games and one of the main attractions of the Dragon Quest series is artist Akira Toriyama.

Although the game works fairly well with the default touch controls, a few tweaks here or there can make it a better experience for players.

In the game’s menu option, players can choose the joystick’s size and placement. Making the joystick as small as possible helps give you a better view of the game, but surprisingly having it off centre makes movement difficult.

The character designs are definitely one of the major draws of the game, but it’s too bad they take such a back seat in the mobile release of the games. Handout

Using the joystick icon to move your character can also result in some occasional slip ups with your character continuing to move in the same direction if you don’t lift your finger. So if you’re on the overworld and enter a town from the top, you’ll likely exit the town.

Again, not a big deal. This game is a port. It’s pretty much the same as the DS version, but slightly cheaper.

As someone who has played this game across multiple consoles, I’d recommend it because it’s a classic that helped define the series.

The controls might be a little sticky and the character portraits are tiny, but those small qualms don’t take away from what was a major leap forward in the games.

The only problem many new players of the series might find is with Dragon Quest IV’s dialogue. Most of the game’s characters come from lands with strong accents and I don’t know how many times I saw the words “dinnae” and “bairn” while playing through Ragnar McRyan’s first chapter.

With some anachronisms to overcome and some design choices that could have been better, Chapters of the Chosen is still in essence an excellent game.